GTA 4: Everyone’s A Rat

by Geoff Haugan on March 29, 2008 at 12:01 am

GTA 4 multiplayer

A fourth (and fantastic looking!) GTA IV trailer is now available if you aren’t already begging for its release April 29th, and Rockstar has announced a new online social club for Xbox Live and PSN that will track all kinds of usage data surrounding the game– plus more in the future.

GTA IV’s release is imminent. The new trailer is as exciting and dramatic as ever, and launching just ahead of the game’s release is the Rockstar Social Club.

Registration for the website is set to begin April 15 and will be open to both Xbox and PlayStation users. The future looks to bring more competitions and awards, but at first the site will track a lot of single-player related statistics as well as multiplayer leaderboards.

The press release details some features of the site:

LCPD Police Blotter - A virtual map and tracker of single-player criminal activity logged in Liberty City from the aggregated data of millions of connected players - showing the most dangerous areas of town, most commonly used weapons and more.

The Story Gang - This special single-player leaderboard recognizes players who complete Niko Bellic’s main story arc of Grand Theft Auto IV - The leaderboard ranks players according to the total amount of playing time it’s taken to complete the story, as well as a historical rank by who has completed it first. Members of this club will receive special online widgets and merit badges marking all of their in-game accomplishments.

The 100% Club - Watch to see who will be the first to complete 100% of the game. The first ten people to be identified on the Social Club as reaching 100% will be sent an ultra-rare commemorative ‘key to the city’ to mark their accomplishment. In the future, the 100% Club will then carry a historical leaderboard showing rankings of who has completed 100% of a game in the shortest span of playing hours.

The Hall of Fame — This area will dynamically recognize those singularly elite players who have reached the top of the hill on various statistical leaderboards, and will also contain a personal awards display of special in-game landmarks and successes in Social Club competitions.

The Liberty City Marathon — A ranking of special physical milestones achieved in the game - from the amount of miles walked, driven, or swam - to the number of bullets fired and stunt-jumps jumped. There will be additional special marathon-based competitions in the future from this area as well.